EL 114 Teaching and Assessment of Macro Skills Midterm 2020 PDF

1|Page 2|Page COURSE EL 114 Teaching and Assessment of the Macro Skills DEVELOPER AND THEIR BACKGROUND Ms. Sheila Marie O. David Dr. Maria Agnes P. Ladia Faculty, Tarlac...

1|Page 2|Page COURSE EL 114 Teaching and Assessment of the Macro Skills DEVELOPER AND THEIR BACKGROUND Ms. Sheila Marie O. David Dr. Maria Agnes P. Ladia Faculty, Tarlac State University College of Teacher Education [email protected] [email protected] COURSE DESCRIPTION This course explores the nature of the macro skills as well as the theoretical bases, principles, methods, and strategies in teaching the macro skills, as a foundation to introduce and engage prospective educators in the teaching-learning context, particularly in language teaching. It also includes the principles, development, and utilization of assessment in measuring skills in listening, speaking, reading, and writing. Students enrolled in this course will experience the preparation of assessment tools or materials, lesson plans, and teaching demonstration. COURSE OUTLINE Week 1: TSU Vision, Mission, Core Values, and Class Orientation Week 2-3: Introduction to the Teaching of the Macro Skills Week 4-5: Assessment of the Macro Skills Week 6-8: Teaching and Assessing Listening Week 9: Midterm Examination Week 10-11: Teaching and Assessing Speaking Week 12-15: Teaching and Assessing Reading Week 16-17: Teaching and Assessing Writing Week 18: Final Examination CHAPTER # 01 TITLE INTRODUCTION TO THE TEACHING OF THE MACRO SKILLS 3|Page RATIONALE This is the first chapter of EL 114-Teaching and Assessment of the Macro Skills. It centers on the intricacies of the nature of macro skills as well as the rudiments in teaching these macro skills, which are necessary in preparation of prospective language teachers in the field. Specifically, this chapter is clustered into four key discussions: (a) What are the Macro Skills?; (b) Current Principles and Concepts in the Teaching of the Macro Skills; (c) Approaches to Language Learning and Teaching; and (d) Writing the Lesson Plan for Macro Skills. INSTRUCTION TO THE USERS This module serves as a guide in understanding one unit or chapter under EL 114. It consists of the following sections: (a) introductory guide: to establish common ground and familiarize you with the course title, description along with the rationale of this chapter/module; (b) pre-test: to gauge your prior knowledge about the lesson; (c) learning objectives: to set the expected outcomes or skills to be learned in this chapter; (d) content (with preparatory, developmental and closure activities): to impart knowledge, skills, and abilities through this mode prepared by the instructor; (e) synthesis/generalization: to outline the focal points that you need to remember in this chapter; (f) evaluation: to check your level of understanding of the concepts explored in this chapter; (g) assignment/agreement: to encourage continuity of learning; and (h) references: to enlist the available resources used for this chapter and give due credit to the intellectual properties of the authors. 4|Page  You can re-read the chapter/module anytime. However, the activities should be answered or completed based on the schedule and/or instructions set by the instructor. The activities are set to be recorded and/or graded by the instructor. Should you have questions, difficulties, or clarifications, feel free to contact the instructor. PRE-TEST Let us do a SELF-CHECK in 3…2…1… Get a clean sheet of paper. Write 3 things that you learned about macro skills in your previous classes, 2 things that you still want to learn about macro skills, and 1 question that you have in mind about macro skills. You may answer this for a maximum of 20 minutes. Once you are done with the pre-test, you may keep your output with you while reading this module, and proceed to check the learning objectives for this chapter. LEARNING OBJECTIVES Upon completion of this chapter, the student will be able to: Distinguish the features of the macro skills; Relate the principles and concepts in the teaching of the macro skills to real-life setting; Explicate the approaches to language learning; Show self-reliance while working independently to complete this chapter; and Draft a lesson plan. CONTENT Before we embark in our new PREPARATORY ACTIVITIES discussion about the macro skills, get a clean sheet of paper and reflect on your strengths and weaknesses in terms of macro skills. How good are you in listening, speaking, reading and writing? Answer this by copying the given table and completing it with your honest evaluation. You may list as many as 5|Page  you want to, and you are given 30 minutes to accomplish the table. STRENGTHS WEAKNESSES Are you done? Once you are done with your table, review your answers. How many strengths and weaknesses have you listed? Which one has a greater number of items in the table: the strengths or the weaknesses? As a prospective language teacher, you are expected to excel in the language arts—including the macro skills. Thus, no matter how many strengths and weaknesses you listed, this course shall help you maintain your strengths and improve your weaknesses in preparation for the teaching field. DEVELOPMENTAL ACTIVITIES In this chapter, our focus is on the teaching of the macro skills. You may review the list that you prepared while reading this section. A. WHAT ARE THE MACRO SKILLS? The main skills are all basic and very important. They are called the Macro Skills. Macro skills refer to the primary, key, main, and largest skill set relative to a particular context. It is commonly referred to in the English language. The four macro skills are reading, listening, writing, and speaking. Traditionally, when we think of the English language, the four skills—listening, speaking, reading, and writing—automatically register in our minds. While there are other skills that play a role in effective communication, these four skills provide ample contributions to the breadth and depth of communication among people. 6|Page In the context of first-language acquisition, the four skills are most often acquired in the order of listening first, then speaking, then possibly reading and writing. They are four capabilities that allow an individual to comprehend, produce and use the language in effective interpersonal communication. The four skills can be classified in three ways: ✓ According to the medium, they are oral or written. ✓ According to the role of the language user, we speak of the encoder, the one who speaks or writes and the decoder, the one who listens or reads. ✓ They are also classified as receptive: listening and reading, and productive: speaking and writing. Listening and reading are called receptive skills because learners do not need to produce language to do these, they receive and understand it. Speaking and writing are called productive skills because learners doing these need to produce language. Simply put, listening and speaking are brain input skills or oral skills, but reading and writing are brain output skills or literacy skills. Oral skills Literacy skills Receptive skills Listening Reading Productive skills Speaking Writing 7|Page As fluency increases, the amount of reading and writing in lessons may also increase. Good language teachers plan lessons, and sequences of lessons, which include a mixture of all the macro-skills, rather than focusing on developing only one macro-skill at a time. It is common for language learners to have stronger receptive than productive skills, that is they can understand more than they can produce. Teachers often link activities for developing students’ receptive and productive skills. It is important for teaching activities to be designed so that learners receive input and modelled language (through listening and reading activities) before they are expected to produce those modelled structures (in their own speaking and writing). Listening and reading activities prepare students to be able to speak and write their own texts. B. CURRENT PRINCIPLES AND CONCEPTS IN THE TEACHING OF THE MACRO SKILLS While the four macro skills are highlighted in language acquisition over the years, Barrot (2016) explicated that there are already six language macro skills as a result of the proliferation of information technology. These macro skills include both the productive skills (i.e. speaking, writing, and representing) and receptive skills (i.e. listening, reading, and viewing). SPEAKING Speaking is a complex process that involves simultaneous attention to content, vocabulary, discourse, information structuring, morphosyntax, sound system, prosody, and pragmalinguistic features (Hinkel, 2006). It runs in a continuum from the immediate and most familiar to decontextualized and more formal situations. It has also been observed that formal oral communication shares similar features with written communication (Celce- Murcia & Olshtain, 2000). From a sociopragmatic point of view, teaching speaking involves effective communication strategies, discourse organization and structuring, conversational routines or small talks, speech acts, and conversation formulas like forms of address (Hinkel, 2006, p. 116). Celce-Murcia and Olshtain (2000) have suggested some effective speaking activities in a language classroom. The first activity deemed effective is role-play in which it simulates real communication that occurs beyond classrooms. Other strategies include group discussions, using the target language outside classrooms, using learners’ input, using feedback, and using authentic speeches. On top of these activities, self- evaluation would also be helpful in enhancing speech performances (Barrot, 2015). As regards speaking proficiency, it can be measured through fluency, comprehensibility, and accuracy. Oral fluency refers to the speaker’s automaticity of oral production (Derwing, 8|Page Munro, & Thomson, 2007). Researchers in the 1990s believed that it can be achieved through engagement in communicative interactions (Hinkel, 2006) and can be enhanced through well-designed and well-planned tasks (Ellis, 2003). Another aspect of speaking proficiency is comprehensibility which refers to the ease and difficulty with which a listener understands L2 accented speech (Derwing et al., 2007). It can be adversely affected by filled pauses, hesitations, excessive and inappropriate pauses, false starts, and slow speaking rate (Derwing, Munro & Thomson, 2001). The third aspect of speaking proficiency is accuracy which relates to both grammar and pronunciation. Since grammar will be extensively discussed in the succeeding section, this part will just focus on pronunciation and its teaching. LISTENING Usually tied up with speaking as a skill is listening. It is a complex process that involves the understanding of spoken data and involves receptive, interpretative, or constructive cognitive processes (Rost, 2005). This definition implies that listening and listening comprehension are essentially the same. Similar to reading, listening involves both bottom-up and top-down processing rather than using these processes individually and that these processes operate simultaneously. L2 listening has three subprocesses namely decoding, comprehension, and interpretation (Rost, 2005). Decoding refers to attending, perceiving speech, recognizing words, and parsing grammar. Comprehension deals with activation of schema, representing propositions, and logical inferencing. Interpretation refers to matching the meaning to previous expectations and evaluating discourse meanings. Further, listening can be reciprocal or nonreciprocal. Reciprocal listening involves dialogues in which the original listener and speaker have alternating roles as source and as receiver of information. Nonreciprocal listening involves a one-way role taking as in the case of listening to monologues. Comparing the two, nonreciprocal listening appears to be more difficult to undertake (Celce-Murcia & Olshtain, 2000). Other variables that influence comprehensibility are speech rate and metrical cadence. In most English varieties, 90% of content words have their stress on the first syllable, most of which are monosyllabic. Also, each pause unit in speech contains at least one prominent content item. As for speech rate, listening generally improves as speech rate is reduced to an optimum level. Normal speech rate is usually from 100 to 240 words per minute 9|Page (Rost, 2005). However, other research findings revealed that more than reducing speech rate, what facilitates comprehensibility is the additional pauses at natural pause boundaries. As regards listening pedagogy, Hinkel (2006) argued that it has shifted from a more linguistically-based approach to a more-schematic-based one which incorporates cultural constructs, discourse clues, pragmatic norms, and topic familiarity. Current listening pedagogy also involves the enhancement of metacognitive and cognitive strategies to facilitate listening comprehension. The most widely adopted metacognitive strategies for listening include self-monitoring and evaluating comprehension process, planning for listening, and determining listening difficulties. As for cognitive strategies, they may include inferencing, elaboration, and summarizing. Note-taking and other academic listening activities are techniques appropriate for advanced listeners and can be integrated with speaking, reading, and writing. Similar to reading, most listening materials for pedagogical purposes are often created, simplified, and graded subjectively (Lynch, 1988). This situation runs contrary to the widely accepted practice of using authentic materials in the classrooms. The concern that listening would be highly difficulty if authentic materials will be used can be addressed by using graded listening tasks (Lynch, 1988). Others proposed extensive listening approach to developing listening skills. One of them is Ridgway (2000) who advocated that when learners are exposed to ample comprehensible listening input, it will eventually lead to automaticity. However, Field (2008) countered such argument saying that there are several concerns on focusing too much on quantity without any consideration to methods for improving comprehension. Mendelsohn (1998) has outlined teaching strategies for a strategy-based L2 listening. The first step is to make learners aware of the value of using strategies when listening. It is followed by pre-listening activities that will activate learners’ schema. Then, listeners are explained on what they will listen to and why. Guided listening is also provided to allow more practice of strategies. Learners are then allowed to practice strategies in a meaning- focused context and to process what has been listened to for note-taking and summarizing among others. Finally, learners are encouraged to self-evaluate their level of comprehension. Related to Mendelsohn’s (1998) proposal, Wilson (2003) proposed the discovery listening approach which is a response to the heavy emphasis given by most published textbooks on practicing comprehension rather than teaching learners the skills needed for an improved performance. Discovery listening allows learners to notice the differences between the original text and the text that they have reconstructed after a listening task. From this noticing of gap, the learners will try to discover the cause of their listening difficulties. The task has three phases: listening, reconstructing, and discovering. 10 | P a g e Listening allows learners to listen to a text without any note-taking. They will, then, assess their comprehension level. Finally, they will listen to the text twice with note- taking. Reconstruction phase allows learners to reconstruct the text as a group. It bis followed by discovering that allows learners to compare the reconstructed text to the original text and classify the causes of errors. They will, then, assess the importance of these errors. After which, learners will listen again to the original text and assess their performance. The listening texts in a discovery-listening task are graded. Self-assessment is also utilized during the task as in the case of third phase. Wilson’s (2003) proposal has semblance to the suggestion of Swain and Lapkin (2001) that a dictogloss task can be employed which will help learners focus more on form. It is done by allowing learners to listen to a short passage and reconstruct it afterwards. VIEWING The dominance of visual media in our lives today has led to the inclusion of viewing in the language macro skills. It refers to perceiving, examining, interpreting, and construction meaning from visual images and is crucial to improving comprehension of print and nonprint materials. With the inclusion of viewing in the macro skills and proliferation of multimedia technology, it is imperative that both speakers and listeners critically assess audiovisual inputs and make meaning from them (Curriculum Planning & Development Division, 2010). This need requires new forms of literacy: media literacy and visual literacy. Media literacy refers to the ability to access, analyze, and evaluate media and technology information that involves moving images and sound effects (Hobbs & Frost, 2003). According to De Abreu (2004), developing media literacy would help students question and critically analyze messages provided to them via media which facilitates critical viewing and thinking. In classroom setting, enhancing media literacy involves learners analyzing their own media consumption habits and identifying the author, purpose, and point of view of television and radio programs, advertisements, and films (Hobbs & Frost, 2003). Visual literacy, on the one hand, refers to the power of giving meaning to and building up similar messages for visual messages and the ability to construct meaning from images (Glorgis, Johnson, Bonomo, Colber, & Al, 1999). As Kang (2004) put it, visual literacy is as important as language and textual literacy. It, thus, obliges teachers to explore the potentials of visual and spatial instructional strategies to better facilitate the learning. One 11 | P a g e way to realize this kind of instruction is through visual organizers. Visual organizers are “visual systems of using spatial frameworks such as diagrams, maps, or charts to organize and present structural knowledge in a content domain” (Kang, 2004, p. 58). The four general types of visual organizers include web-like organizers (spider map and semantic map), hierarchical organizers (concept map and network tree), matrix organizers (compare/contrast matrix), and linear organizers (Venn diagram, continuum, chain of events, and storyboard). These organizers are mainly used when teaching reading so that students can have better conceptual framework of their existing knowledge and new knowledge. Using visual organizers also allows learners to actively construct and interpret information. Though these two forms of literacy are at the core of contemporary culture, they are still treated superficially if not ignored in the classroom. READING Traditionally, people imagine reading as a simple process that is linear and passive. However, more recent views have established that it is a complex cognitive process of decoding written symbols. It is a “linguistic, socio-cultural, physical and cognitive activity” (CPDD, 2010, p. 31) which involves getting meaning from and putting meaning to the printed text. This definition implies that reading and reading comprehension are essentially the same meaning. Reading, in many instances, requires simultaneous application of skills and subprocesses, such as identifying author’s mood and purpose, identifying main ideas, context clues, analysis, evaluation, recognizing and assigning meaning to words, constructing meanings at sentence and discourse levels, and relating such meanings to the readers’ already existing knowledge (Graves, Juel, & Graves, 1998). According to Chun and Plass (1997), two factors may have great influence on reading ability of learners: L2 language proficiency and L1 reading skills. Others are topic interest and prior knowledge (Barry & Lazarte, 1998) as well as linguistic complexity (Barrot, 2012; Barrot, 2013; Barrot, 2015c). Reading is an interactive and problem-solving process making meaning from the text. It possesses the following characteristics: (a) reading is a language skill that can be developed through systematic practice; (b) reading is a two-way process that involves the communication between the author and the reader; (c) reading is visual which involves the 12 | P a g e transmission of message via optic nerves and requires good eyesight; (d) reading is a productive process that has purpose whether academically, personally, or professionally; (e) reading is the foundation of good writing. Linguists assert that one of the most effective means of developing writing skills is to be a good reader. Through reading, the reader gains knowledge on lexemes, syntax, morphology, and orthography. Reading process can be viewed from three different perspectives: bottom-up, top- down, and interactive (Chun & Plass, 1997). Bottom-up processing is data-driven which puts emphasis on textual decoding (lower- level processes) such as letter and word recognition. It assumes that reading progresses from recognizing first the lower- level units toward more complex ones through synthesis in which there is little or no interference by reader’s background knowledge (Graves et al., 1998). Tsui and Fullilove (1998) contend that bottom- up processing skill is a prerequisite to good reading be it poor or good readers. Top- down processing, on the other hand, is concept-driven that puts emphasis on schema and reader interpretation. It assumes that reading starts from making meaning in the mind of the reader which will then influence the sampling of the text to substantiate or disprove the reader’s hypothesis (Graves et al., 1998). In short, the reader brings her/his background knowledge to the text. The limitation of top- down model is that it requires readers to predict meaning; consequently, only fluent readers would be able to manage such approach to reading (Eskey, 1988). Lastly, interactive processing which is both data- driven and concept-driven places emphasis on the interaction between lower-level (decoding) and higher-level (inferencing and interpretation) processing. It postulates that reading is neither exclusively top-down nor exclusively bottom-up. Rather, reading involves the interaction between linguistic knowledge and schemata (Graves et al., 1998). Most of the current L2 reading research constitutes the notion of interactive reading model and schema (Fecteau, 1999). Another view of reading process that has emerged is the cognitive-constructivist view which emphasizes that reading involves an active search for meaning which is largely dependent on the readers’ schema (Graves et al., 1998). Schema can be distinguished into content schema (knowledge about people, culture, world, and universe) and formal/textual schema (knowledge about text structure and rhetorical organization) (Barnett, 1989; Coiro & Dobler, 2007). As regards textual schema, Graves et al. (1998) stressed that most children have developed their textual schema for the organization of narratives because narratives mirror the environment they live in. Additionally, children that are being read of narratives by their parents have a considerably rich narrative text schema. Although it is proven that children have significant schema on narratives, they lack one on expository texts. From the perspective of whole language pedagogy, reading adheres to some guiding principles (Goodman & Goodman, 2009). First, no reading will occur without comprehension. However, it should be noted that no matter how good the reader is, there will always be misunderstanding of a text. Second, developing reading comprehension is 13 | P a g e learned through making sense of written language. Third, reading development does not follow a linear development of skills; that is, reading does not develop from part to whole but from whole to part. Finally, learners need to be exposed to authentic materials that are at their level and interests. It is a known fact that reading involves reading strategies and reading skills. Unfortunately, many reading teachers are confused between these two concepts. Afflerbach, David Pearson, and Paris (2008, p. 368) explained that reading strategies are “deliberate, goal- directed attempts to control and modify the reader’s efforts to decode text, understand words, and construct meaning of text.” Reading skills, on the other hand, refers to “automatic actions that result in decoding and comprehension with speed, efficiency, and fluency and usually occur without awareness of the components or control involved”. They have also advocated for an explicit teaching of both skills and strategies. One way to teach strategy effectively is through assessment. Assessment should focus on processes involved in skills and strategies. The purpose of this assessment is to identify what learners cannot do and what they do incorrectly. Generally, strategy assessment should be formative in nature making it more informal and embedded in instruction while skill assessment should be summative. White (1981) suggested some ways of helping teachers put reading skills to classroom setting and relate them with other macroskills. The first step is to arouse students’ interest by relating the text to their schema. The next step is to provide learners with things to search for in the text. Then, encourage students to discuss the text to one another. Finally, ask students to write about what they have read. Similarly, Nunan (1999) suggested that reading programs be designed by determining the purpose of reading course, determining the text types and tasks for the course, determining the linguistic items to be covered, integrating tasks and reading texts to class work units, and integrating reading to other skills. WRITING Writing refers to the act of putting ideas in text whether print or nonprint. It is a “non-linear, exploratory, and generative process” as they discover ideas and reformulate them (Zamel, 1983, p.165). Writing allows the writer to reflect on the world around her/him; it makes communication effective; it documents and captures thoughts and ideas relevant to decision making; and it provides knowledge to both the reader and the writer. Any composition we write can either be short or long. It can range from short paragraphs to 14 | P a g e long essays. With regard to the text type written by students, at elementary level, the most common types of writings are personal narratives; for secondary, it is expository with emphasis on writing about literature; and for tertiary, they expand their writing to argumentative essays (Sperling & Freedman, 2001). As regards L1-L2 writing relationship, Kobayashi and Rinnert (2008) claimed that transfer of writing skills happen in a bidirectional way; that is, from L1 to L2 and vice versa. He further concluded that writing competence can be transferred across languages. This may be the reason why in Krapels’s (1990) review, findings revealed that even advanced L2 writers consider themselves stronger when composing using their native language; that is, an increase use of L1 in writing correlates with better L2 writing especially if the topic is culture bound. According to Celce-Murcia and Olshtain (2000), a well-written text has two features that facilitate the comprehensibility of a text. These are coherence and cohesion. Coherence relates to the pragmatic features and culturally acceptable rhetorical organization, structure, and sequence. Cohesion, on the one hand, is the linguistic consequence of coherence through the use of cohesive devices making it an overt feature of a text. As regards the writing process, Rollinson (2005) has listed some insights that good writing involves revision; that writer need to have specific audience for writing; that writing involves multiple drafts with feedback in between them; that peers are useful resource of feedback at various stages of writing; that training students to peer response leads to a more quality writing; and that peer and teacher feedback act complementarily with additive value. Currently, there are five approaches to teaching writing: product approach, process approach, genre approach, process genre approach, and post-process pedagogy. More recently, Barrot (2015d) proposed a sociocognitive-transformative approach in teaching writing which incorporates the use of technology into the writing process (Barrot, 2016). Product approach focuses on what a final piece of writing will look like and measures the product using vocabulary use, grammar, mechanics, content, and organization as criteria (Brown, 1994). The procedure includes four stages: familiarization, controlled writing, and free writing. From a teacher’s perspective, it involves assigning a piece of writing, collecting it, and returning it for further revision. The concerns with using product approach is it ignores the actual process used by the students in producing a piece of writing, focuses on imitation and churning out a perfect product on the first draft, requires constant error correction that affects students’ motivation, and does not prepare students for real world. The last four approaches have placed grammar in the background in writing texts and methodology books in which grammar checking is usually considered as post- writing process (Tribble, 1996). But the question is the role that grammar plays in the teaching and enhancing writing skills. Muncie (2002, p. 185) proposed some guidelines in incorporating grammar to writing classes. First, grammar should not defocus learners from the meaning orientation of writing pedagogy. Second, teacher feedback should not involve any grammar correction. Third, grammar correction must be directly linked to the editing stage. Fourth, 15 | P a g e grammar component should satisfy the perceived learners’ needs. Finally, grammar component should involve the recycling of materials. Though content and meaning should be the utmost priority in a writing class, it is recognized as well that linguistic accuracy situates itself as an important factor in any final written output especially if linguistic inaccuracy impedes the clarity of meaning (Ashwell, 2000). Several other scholars have proposed that grammar correction be excluded from the teaching of writing. One of them is Truscott (1996) who strongly argued that grammar correction in writing classes should be abandoned because it is ineffective, has detrimental effects, and lacks merits. He defined grammar correction as correcting grammatical errors to improve students’ ability to write accurately. He further asserted that the burden of proof resides on those who claim that grammar correction is beneficial. Truscott (1996) asserted that one possible reason that error correction failed is that it does not respect the order of acquisition by correcting students on grammatical forms for which they are not ready yet. The acquisition of grammatical forms is a gradual developmental process contrary to the view underpinning error correction of a sudden discovery. These claims against the role of grammar correction in writing were challenged by Ferris (2004) by arguing that there are insufficient studies on error correction in L2 writing. And if ever proponents of error correction claim its effectiveness, the burden of proof is on them. She further asserted that, granted that research base in L2 composition is inadequate, teachers cannot afford to wait for generalizable research findings from L2 composition researchers. It is because teachers struggle to making their learners write more effectively and learners lack progress in terms of accuracy (Ferris, 2010). In the meantime, what teachers can do is to use the existing evidence, experience, and intuitions in the teaching of writing. Despite the ample studies that compare the effectiveness of different types of error corrections, very few have compared “correction” versus “no correction” for ethical reasons. With these contentions, Ferris (2004) suggested that error treatment must be made part of L2 writing instruction particularly indirect feedback. Students should also be given opportunities to edit their own work after receiving feedback and prepare and maintain error charts for heightened awareness of their linguistic weaknesses. Finally, they should be given supplemental grammar instruction based on their needs and instruction on paragraphing and punctuation (Tsang, 1996). C. APPROACHES TO LANGUAGE LEARNING AND TEACHING Progress in our understanding of how L2 languages are learned, and subsequently taught, has expanded impressively over the past five decades. Research findings from a variety of disciplines, mainly those of linguistics, psycholinguistics, cognitive psychology and sociolinguistics, have better established the complex nature of language learning: it has become clear that linguistic, psychological and sociocultural factors interact and play a part in this process. Moreover, these findings have also shown that communication is crucial in 16 | P a g e the process of learning a language (Mitchell and Myles 1998) and that the degree of success achieved in this process depends to a great extent on how meaning is negotiated in particular acts of communication. This view of language learning explains the emergence of communicative approaches to language teaching over the last few decades, whose main goal is to develop learners’ communicative competence. However, the implementation of a communicative approach is not a simple task. In fact, it presents a challenge to the teaching profession (Anderson 1993), since it requires a full understanding of what is involved in the L2 learning process. THE ENVIRONMENTALIST APPROACH TO LANGUAGE LEARNING Up to the end of the 1960s, the field of language learning was dominated by environmentalist ideas. The theory underlying these ideas was rooted in two parallel schools of thought in linguistics and psychology. In linguistics, the structural school of linguistics (Bloomfield 1933) was strongly influential in the 1940s and 1950s. The approach arose from the attempts to analyze Indian languages, many of which had no written system and therefore the only data available was the oral form of the language. Based on the evidence that many languages did not have a written form and that people learnt to speak before they learnt to read or write, structural linguists assumed that language was primarily an oral phenomenon. Furthermore, written language was a secondary representation of speech. To the structuralists, language was viewed as consisting of different elements related to each other in a linear way by means of a series of structures or rules, these elements being phonemes, morphemes, words, and sentence types. The target of language learning was to master all the elements of the system and to learn the rules by which these elements were combined, from phoneme to morpheme to word to phrase to sentence. This specific theory of the nature of language learning, which was attracting language teachers’ attention at that time, was the general learning theory then dominant in mainstream psychology, behaviorism. In psychology, the behaviorist school (Skinner 1957) dominated thinking in the field during the same time period, that is, in the 1940s and 1950s. This approach stemmed from early learning theorists who attempted to describe the learning process in terms of conditioning. To the behaviorists, behavior happened in associative stimulus-response chains, and all learning was seen as associative learning or habit-formation which became stronger with reinforcement. Therefore, the occurrence of behavior was dependent upon three crucial elements in learning: a stimulus, which elicited the behavior; a response, which was triggered by the stimulus; and reinforcement, which marked the response as being appropriate or inappropriate and encouraged repetition or suppression of the response. Behaviorist theory placed emphasis on the role of the environment and denied the existence of internal mental processes, which were regarded as “inaccessible to proper scientific investigation” (Williams and Burden 1997: 8). The main proponent of this approach to the study of (learning) behavior was generally considered to be Skinner (1957, 1987), who constructed a system of principles to account for human behavior from the observation of 17 | P a g e animal responses to stimuli in laboratory experiments. In his view, language learning, like any other kind of learning, was simply seen as a stimulus-response-reinforcement chain which led to the establishment of the appropriate habits of the language being learnt through automatic conditioning processes. Children received linguistic input from language users in their environment and positive reinforcement for their (grammatically) correct repetitions. As a result, and encouraged by the environment, they continued to practice until habits were formed. Imitation and practice, according to Skinner (1957), were strong contributing factors in the language learning process. Structural linguistics, in conjunction with behaviorist psychology led to the environmentalist approach to language learning. The American structuralist Bloomfield (1933) made the marriage between these two schools of thought clear in his book Language, which provides an excellent description of how language is acquired from a behaviorist point of view. The implications of this theoretical approach for language teaching were, thus, twofold (Mitchell and Myles 1998). First, it was believed that learning took place by imitating and practicing the same structures time after time. Second, teachers should make it explicitly clear what was to be taught and focus mainly on the structures that were presumably more difficult. This environmentalist account of language learning offered a reasonable explanation of how children learn some basic, routine aspects of language. Moreover, it showed the important role played by adults and educators in setting appropriate learning conditions (Alcón 2002). However, by focusing only on the input received by the child, it was unable to provide a complete explanation of how children learn the more complex grammatical structures of the language. This type of work was the focus of study in subsequent years. THE INNATIST APPROACH TO LANGUAGE LEARNING By the 1960s, the fields of linguistics and psychology witnessed major changes. Linguistics saw a paradigm shift from structural linguistics, which was based on the mere description of surface forms of utterances, to generative linguistics, which was concerned with both surface forms of utterances as well as the abstract structures underlying sentences, thus emphasizing the creative nature of human language. This paradigm shift was initiated by the publication of Chomsky’s revolutionary book Syntactic Structures (1957), in which he explained Transformational-Generative Grammar. This linguistics theory contends that language has a deep structure, which consists of the essential meanings, and a surface structure, which is made up of the particular way in which ideas are stated. Thus, there is one type of rules, phrase structure rules, which generate deep structures, and a second type, called transformational rules, which are responsible for converting deep structure into surface structure. Chomsky (1957) was interested not only in describing language, but also in explaining language behavior by studying the rules by which speakers and writers transformed their meanings (deep structure) into the particular sentences they say or write (surface structure) and the rules by which listeners and readers answered to these sentences by discovering their meanings. Following Saussure’s (1915) 18 | P a g e dichotomy of langue (the language system) and parole (actual speech), Chomsky made the theoretical distinction between competence and performance and it was this competence or langue that generative theory was trying to explain. Two years later Chomsky (1959) reviewed Skinner’s Verbal Behaviour (1957) and made a critique of behaviorism by arguing consistently that a theory that only considers the observable responses in linguistic interaction could not hope to account for language behavior. He proved that statement to be true with two kinds of evidence. First, children can create and understand new sentences that they have never learnt before. He contended that this creativity implies that children have internalized an underlying system of rules (what he calls language competence) rather than strings of words. Second, all children successfully learn their native language at an early age in life despite the complexity and abstractness of linguistic rules. Furthermore, they accomplish this complex task of language learning without being systematically corrected on language points. Chomsky claimed that children were innately predisposed to acquire the language of the community into which they were born because they were born with some kind of Language Acquisition Device (LAD) to tackle the language learning task. In later work, Chomsky and his followers (Chomsky 1981; Cook 1988; White 1989) replaced the term LAD by the idea of universal grammar. This was a theory of innate principles and rules of inferences that enable the child to learn any grammar, or what Cook (1997: 262) defined as “the black box responsible for language acquisition.” Around the same period of time, the field of psychology also underwent a major change as a result of the emergence of the hybrid field of psycholinguistics, which in its initial years of existence, aimed to test Chomsky’s innatist theory of language acquisition. In direct contrast to the antimentalistic and mechanic view of human learning advocated by the behaviorist approach, this new approach was mentalistic and dynamic (Ellis 1994; Mitchell and Miles 1998). The learner was seen as possessing an innate ability to process language and as actively participating in the learning process, using various mental strategies in order to sort out the language system to be learnt. Psycholinguistics studies (Klima and Bellugi 1966; Slobin 1970; Brown 1973) showed conclusively that children were active rather than passive participants in the language learning process, since they inferred rules to test how language worked. This insight enabled researchers to explain why sentences such as I drinked the juice or I have two foots are produced in early childhood. In the first construction children are inferring that the past tense is made by adding -ed, whereas in the second construction they infer that the plural is formed by adding -s. In addition, this research also found that children’s language development was incremental and could be characterized as going through similar stages. Longitudinal studies and cross-sectional studies (Brown 1973; de Villiers and de Villiers 1973) also found that there was a consistent order of acquisition in a number of grammatical morphemes. All these findings, therefore, seemed to support Chomsky’s assumptions that children are born with a predisposition to language acquisition. The implications of this 19 | P a g e theoretical approach for language teaching were, thus, twofold. First, it was believed that language learning was a rule-governed internal behavior (not the automatic formation of new habits). Second, teachers should develop learners’ mental construction of the language system. This innatist account of language learning, which focused on the child’s output, was essential in that it provided a description of what was learnt. However, a focus on the product of acquisition could not establish the operation of the process of learning. Additionally, such a view failed to account for the functions of language. Therefore, it was still necessary to focus on the actual course language development took and to grant environmental and linguistic input an essential role in the language learning process (Ellis 1994). The consideration of these aspects took place in the following years. THE INTERACTIONIST APPROACH TO LANGUAGE LEARNING By the 1970s additional developments could be seen in the fields of linguistics and psychology. In the linguistics field, researchers began to turn their attention to discourse or language beyond the sentence (Schiffrin 1994). The development of discourse analysis supposed a shift within the field of linguistics away from the study of isolated sentences and toward understanding how sentences were connected. This new orientation advocated the study of both structure and function in order to understand what language was. The functional analysis of language was mainly represented by Halliday’s systemic grammar (1970, 1973, 1974, 1975), which attempted to explain how the function of language determines the form of language. Halliday (1975) postulated a total of seven communicative functions characterizing the child’s early communicative development, all of which were related to aspects of social life. These functions were: instrumental, which involves the use of language to get things; regulatory, which involves the use of language to regulate people’s behavior; interactional, which involves the use of language to interact with other people; personal, which involves the use of language to express one’s feelings; heuristic, which involves the use of language to explore the outside world; imaginative, which involves the use of language to create an environment, and representational, which involves the use of language to communicate information. He theorized that children learned to talk because it served a function for them. Halliday’s (1975) theory underscored the crucial importance of context of situation in the description of language systems and language was viewed as meaning potential. Therefore, the decontextualized analysis of formal structures followed by structural and generative linguistics was losing ground in favor of a contextualized perspective followed by systemic-functional linguistics. It was also around the 1970s when psycholinguists’ attempts to test the psychological implication of Chomsky’s (1957) theory were largely absorbed into mainstream cognitive psychology. In direct contrast to the behaviorist approach and in line with the work carried 20 | P a g e out in psycholinguistics, cognitive psychology was interested in the mental processes that were involved in the (language) learning act. However, the way these mental processes were studied varied considerably (Harley 2001). On the one hand, there was the information processing approach (Atkinson and Shiffrin 1968; Schank and Abelson 1977), which was mainly concerned with the way human beings take in information, process it and act upon it. To do so, information theorists distinguished several components in the cognitive system and explored the ways in which these components acted upon the information. Thus, constructs such as attention, perception and memory became the focus of work for information processing theorists. On the other hand, there was the constructivist approach, which was mainly concerned with the way human beings make their own personal understanding from the experiences that surround them. This constructivist approach grew mainly out of the work of Piaget (1966, 1972, 1974), who discovered that learning developed through a series of stages, each stage having a set of cognitive characteristics that determined how learning could take place. He was more concerned with the process of learning (the how) than with the product of learning (the what) and saw cognitive development as a process within which there is an interaction between genetics and experience. Therefore, cognitive psychology enabled psychologists to better understand the mental processes involved in learning by analyzing constructs such as attention, perception and memory (Pearson and Stephens 1994). In addition to the above-stated major changes that took place in linguistics and psychology, the 1970s saw the emergence of new disciplines which brought new approaches to the study of discourse or language in use. Here, mention should be made of the contribution of sociolinguistics as a discipline, and in particular the influential work of Hymes (1971, 1972), who was among the first theorists to react against Chomsky’s (1965) view of language. He felt that Chomsky’s theoretical distinction between competence and performance did not include any references to aspects of language use in social practice and related issues concerning the appropriacy of an utterance to a particular situation. Therefore, he introduced the term communicative competence, which included not only Chomsky’s (1965) grammatical competence but also the rules of language use in social context and the sociolinguistic norms of appropriacy. In such a theoretical framework, the field of language learning was dominated by interactionist ideas which emphasized the role of the linguistic environment in interaction with the child’s innate predisposition to language development. The interactionists’ position maintained that both internal and external factors played a key role in the process of learning a language. In direct contrast to innatists, interactionists argued that a crucial element in such a process was the language which was modified (modified input) to suit the capabilities of the learners (Lightbown and Spada 1993). As indicated by van Els et al. (1984: 26), this approach represented a shift in the discussion “away from innate versus learned linguistics ability, and toward the children’s cognitive capacity to discover structure in the language around them.” 21 | P a g e The implications of this theoretical approach for language teaching were, thus, twofold. First, it was believed that learning was dynamic, social and communicative in nature. Second, the goal of teachers should focus on developing learners’ communicative competence and emphasize learners’ cognitive capacity in the language learning process. This interactionist approach to language learning accounted for the functions of language use in social context and emphasized the quality of interaction as well as learners’ cognitive capacity in such a process. All these aspects have been regarded as essential in developing learners’ communicative competence in the L2 learning process, and this is the focus of our next section. COMMUNICATIVE APPROACH TO L2 TEACHING Our discussion up to this point has focused on those learning theories that constitute the general background of theories for language teaching. This general knowledge, we believe, is crucial to gain a full understanding of the models of communicative competence that have been proposed to make the process of L2 teaching more effective. In this section, therefore, we review these models and we also discuss some of their limitations. The first model of communicative competence, regarded as the pioneering work on which the theoretical bases of communicative approaches to L2 language teaching have been founded is that of Canale and Swain (1980), and further expanded by Canale (1983). This model presented an integrative theoretical framework consisting of four main competencies: grammatical, sociolinguistic, strategic, and discourse competence. Grammatical competence, the first component of the model, refers to the knowledge of the language code. It includes knowledge of vocabulary, rules of pronunciation and spelling, word formation and sentence structure. Sociolinguistic competence refers to the knowledge of the sociocultural rules of use in a particular context. Strategic competence involves the knowledge of how to use verbal and nonverbal communication strategies to handle breakdowns in communication. Discourse competence, the last component of the model, is concerned with the knowledge of achieving coherence and cohesion in a spoken or written text. According to the authors, learners’ knowledge of these four components was essential to prepare them to face their communicative needs in the L2. However, they did not provide a description of the relationship among these components, a fact that was regarded in the model of communicative competence proposed by Savignon (1983). Her model, which included the same four competencies already mentioned above, adopted the shape of an inverted pyramid to show how an increase in only one component produces an increase in the overall level of communicative competence, since all components are interrelated to each other. This assumption is supported by the fact that a measure of both sociolinguistic and strategic competencies, without any knowledge of grammatical competence, can 22 | P a g e contribute to increase someone’s communicative competence (i.e., without the use of language, a person can communicate through gestures or facial expressions). These two models of communicative competence, which were developed during the 1980s, were serious endeavors to define the communicative competence construct. But in spite of these attempts, they received criticism on the basis that they did not take into consideration the pragmatic component. Although it may be argued that both models included pragmatic competence as an area within sociolinguistic competence, it was not until the late 1980s that pragmatic competence was explicitly considered to be a component of communicative competence. Additionally, we believe that no attention was paid to the key role of the four skills in these communicative frameworks. The task of considering the above-mentioned aspects was carried out by Bachman (1987), who developed a model of communicative language ability in which three components were included: language competence, strategic competence and psychomotor skills. Language competence is, in turn, divided into two components, organizational and pragmatic competence. On the one hand, organizational competence consists of grammatical competence and textual competence, which are comparable to Canale’s (1983) and Savignon’s (1983) concepts of grammatical and discourse competencies respectively. On the other hand, pragmatic competence is further divided into two subcomponents, namely illocutionary competence, which refers to the knowledge of the pragmatic conventions for performing acceptable language functions, and sociolinguistic competence, which deals with the knowledge of the sociolinguistic conventions for performing language functions appropriately in a given context. This last competence, thus, is similar to the one proposed by Canale and Swain (1980) and Savignon (1983), although for these authors sociolinguistic competence was considered to be one of the four main components, while Bachman includes it within pragmatic competence. Additionally, Bachman (1987, 1990) also considered two more components of communicative language ability, namely strategic and psychomotor skills (Bachman 1987) or psychophysiological mechanisms (Bachman 1990). The former allows language users to employ the elements included within language competence depending on the context in which communication takes place in order to negotiate meaning. The latter involves the receptive or productive mode in which competence is performed through a particular type of channel: oral or visual in the case of receptive language use, and aural or visual in the case of productive language use. This theoretical framework developed by Bachman (1987, 1990), made a distinction with regard to pragmatic competence and took into account the psychophysiological mechanisms which are essential for performing utterances. However, the author did not try to establish any relationship among these constituents, as Savignon (1983) had already done. 23 | P a g e Thus, a few years later, Celce-Murcia, Dörnyei, and Thurrell (1995) presented a detailed model of communicative competence in which the authors not only incorporated pragmatic competence under the name of actional competence and the receptive and productive skills within discourse competence, but also highlighted the connection existing among these components – together with the linguistic, sociocultural and strategic competencies – that go to make up such a model. In analyzing these components, Celce-Murcia, Dörnyei, and Thurrell (1995) start with the core, that is to say, discourse competence, which concerns the selection and sequencing of sentences to achieve a unified text, whether it be spoken or written. Linguistic competence entails the basic elements of communication, such as sentence patterns, morphological inflections, phonological and orthographic systems, as well as lexical resources (i.e., formulaic constructions, collocations or phrases related to conversational structure). Sociocultural competence refers to the speaker’s knowledge of how to express appropriate messages within the social and cultural context of communication in which they are produced. In this sense, this constituent is related to Canale and Swain’s (1980), Savignon’s (1983) and Bachman’s (1990) sociolinguistic competence. In fact, in Savignon’s revised model (2001), sociolinguistic competence is also termed sociocultural competence in a similar way to that of Celce-Murcia, Dörnyei, and Thurrell (1995). Actional competence involves the understanding of the speakers’ communicative intent by performing and interpreting speech act sets. Finally, these four components are influenced by the last one, strategic competence, which is concerned with the knowledge of communication strategies and how to use them. This model thus provides a clear picture of the interrelationship among all the components. However, with regard to the function they assign to strategic competence, our view is that this competence should be placed at the same level as the rest of the competencies, since its aim is to build discourse competence while allowing communicative ability to develop parallel to the other components. Up to this point we have reviewed the models of communicative competence applicable to language teaching that were developed during the 1980s and 1990s. More recently, Alcón (2000) also proposes a model of communicative competence, which is a hybrid of the models proposed by Bachman (1990) and Celce-Murcia, Dörnyei, and Thurrell (1995). Here, comparable to Bachman’s (1990) model, communicative competence consists of three main subcompetencies that are interrelated to each other, namely discourse competence, psychomotor skills and competencies, and strategic competence. Discourse competence is the core of communicative competence in line with the model put forward by Celce-Murcia, Dörnyei, and Thurrell (1995) and is, in turn, broken down into the three constituents of linguistic, textual, and pragmatic components. Linguistic competence refers not only to grammatical knowledge but to all aspects of the linguistic system including those lexical resources such as formulaic speech. The textual and pragmatic constituents are necessary for the construction and interpretation of 24 | P a g e discourse and, in this sense, pragmatic competence is similar to Celce-Murcia, Dörnyei, and Thurrell’s (1995) actional competence. As far as the psychomotor skills and competencies are concerned, Alcón (2000) suggests that discourse competence influences the abilities of listening, speaking, reading and writing, which are interrelated to one another in order to use the language for communicative purposes. Finally, strategic competence includes both communication and learning strategies, thus widening the conceptualization of strategic competence proposed in the model by Celce-Murcia, Dörnyei, and Thurrell (1995), which only considered the knowledge of communication strategies and how to use them. Three aspects of Alcón’s (2000) model are of particular interest: 1) discourse competence is the core of the model; 2) an explicit function is given to the four psychomotor skills (speaking, listening, reading and writing), and 3) strategic competence is an important component in its own right that incorporates both communication and learning strategies. However, although it may be assumed that Alcón (2000) includes sociolinguistic (Canale and Swain 1980; Savignon 1983) or sociocultural (Celce-Murcia, Dörnyei, and Thurrell 1995) competencies under pragmatic competence by following Bachman (1987, 1990), it is our view that these competencies should be considered separately, as in Celce-Murcia, Dörnyei, and Thurrell’s (1995) model, given the increasing recognition nowadays associated to cultural aspects. According to Cortazzi and Jin (1999), culture can be regarded as a wide framework of values, beliefs, attitudes and behaviors that are used to subjectively interpret other people’s actions and patterns of thinking. Given the subjective nature of this concept, it is essential for foreign language learners to become aware of different cultural aspects if they are to make an appropriate interpretation of the target language. For this reason, in order to foster L2 learners’ knowledge of the skills required to be successful in intercultural communication, the development of intercultural communicative competence should be included within a communicative approach for L2 teaching. This competence has been defined by Meyer (1991: 137) as “the ability of a person to behave adequately in a flexible manner when confronted with actions, attitudes and expectations of representatives of foreign cultures.” In fact, Byram (1997) proposed a model of intercultural communicative competence, given the need to integrate the teaching of intercultural communicative skills as part of classroom instruction. D. WRITING THE LESSON PLAN FOR MACRO SKILLS Persons that plan for the future are those that are sure of their objectives, that is why in education, to plan a lesson is extremely necessary. A lesson plan is defined as a source or tool that guides teachers through their working learning process. 25 | P a g e It is imperative for a teacher to plan his/her lessons since this has the content, method, activity, practice and material that the teacher will use in the development of the class. Teachers that do not use a lesson plan usually mislead the learning process. A lesson plan is guided by objectives that the students will assimilate, learn and perform. It can also serve as “a useful in-lesson reminder to you of your pre-lesson thought” (Scrivener, 1994). To write a lesson plan takes time. The activities included are well organized to assure the students learning. In an ESL or EFL lesson plan teachers integrate the four macro skills since they do not occur in isolation in real life. As a matter of fact, the use of one skill leads to another. The practice included in the lesson plan is properly order from the easiest to the most difficult task. Some EFL teachers recommend ordering the activities from controlled, semi controlled and free practice. Each of this practices are divided in: listening controlled practice, speaking controlled practice, reading controlled practice, and writing controlled practice; listening semi controlled practice, speaking semi controlled practice, reading semi controlled practice, and writing semi controlled practice; Finally we have free listening practice, free speaking practice, free reading practice, and free writing practice. PREPARING THE LESSON PLAN When beginning to write a lesson plan, it is important to write the generalities which include: the name of the institution, the name of the subject, the level, date, and the teacher’s name. After the generalities you may consider writing down the unit number, content, and target structure. The objectives go in infinitive form and always end with an adverb. You can include a general objective and specific objectives. It is advisable to include just one general objective since it takes time and hard work to achieve it. Timing is very important. You must include the estimate time that the lesson plan will last. Now you may think in the material you will need. Write down in details every single thing needed to develop the activities included in the lesson plan. The warm up or motivation is very important to break the ice and to have student get familiar with the topic. Remember that this section must be well related with the content you will teach. It can last around 5, 10 or 15 minutes. As follows you will find examples of warm ups and fillers you may use. Remember that to do so you must take into account the students’ age, sex, religion, beliefs and English level. 26 | P a g e  WARM UPS AND FILLERS 1. Yesterday (intermediate, group) Have a learner stand in front of the group and make one statement about yesterday, such as "Yesterday I went shopping." Then let everyone else ask questions to learn more information, such as "Who did you go with?" "What did you buy?" "What time did you go?" etc. Try this with 1-2 different learners each day. 2. Criss-Cross (beginner-intermediate, large group) Learners must be seated in organized rows at least 4x4. Have the front row of learners stand. Ask simple questions like "What day/time is it?" Learners raise their hands (or blurt out answers) and the first person to answer correctly may sit down. The last standing learner's line (front- to-back) must stand and the game continues until 3-4 rows/lines have played. You can use diagonal rows if the same person gets stuck standing each time. To end, ask a really simple question (e.g. "What's your name?") directly to the last student standing. Variation for small group: the whole group stands and may sit one by one as they raise their hands and answer questions. 3. Show & Tell (any level, individual or group) A learner brings an item from home and talks about it in front of the group. Give learners enough advance notice to prepare and remind them again before their turn. Have a back up plan in case the learner forgets to bring an item. Beginners may only be able to share the name of an item and where they got it. Be sure to give beginners specific instructions about what information you want them to tell. 4. Mystery Object (advanced, group) Bring an item that is so unusual that the learners are not likely to recognize what it is. Put it inside a box or a bag so they can’t see what it is. Students take turns feeling the object with their hand. Spend some time eliciting basic descriptions of the item and guesses about what it is and how it's used. This is an activity in observation and inference, so don't answer questions. Just write down descriptions and guesses until someone figures it out or you reveal the mystery. 5. Name Bingo (beginner, large group) Hand out a blank grid with enough squares for the number of people in your class. The grid should have the same number of squares across and down. Give the students a few minutes to circulate through the class and get everyone's name written on a square. Depending on the number of blank squares left over, you can have them write their own name on a square, or your name, or give them one 'free' square. When everyone is seated again, have each person give a short self- introduction. You can draw names randomly or go in seating order. With each introduction, that student's name square may be marked on everyone's grid, as in Bingo. Give a prize to the first 2-3 students to cross off a row. 6. Name Crossword (any level, group) Write your name across or down on the board being sure not to crowd the letters. Students take turns coming to the board, saying their name, and writing it across or down, overlapping one letter 27 | P a g e that is already on the board. It's usually best if you allow students to volunteer to come up rather than calling on them in case a letter in their name isn't on the board yet, although the last few students may need encouragement if they're shy. 7. Similarities (beginner-intermediate, group) Give each person one or more colored shapes cut from construction paper. They need to find another person with a similar color, shape, or number of shapes and form pairs. Then they interview each other to find 1-2 similarities they have, such as working on a farm or having two children or being from Asia. They can share their findings with the class if there is time. 8. Snowball Fight (any level, group) Give learners a piece of white paper and ask them to write down their name, country of origin, and some trivial fact of your choice (such as a favorite fruit). Have everyone wad the pages into 'snowballs' and toss them around for a few minutes. On your signal, everyone should unwrap a snowball, find the person who wrote it, and ask 1-2 more trivial facts. Write the questions on the board so the students can refer to them. Remember that each learner will need to ask one person the questions and be asked questions by a third person, so leave enough time. Variation for small groups: learners can take turns introducing the person they interviewed. 9. Mystery Identities (any level, group) Write the names of famous people or places (or use animals or fruits for a simplified version) onto 3x5 cards. Attach a card to each learner's back. Give them time to mingle and ask each other questions to try to figure out their tagged identities. This is usually limited to yes/no questions, although beginners might be allowed to ask any question they can. Be at least 90% sure that the learners have heard of the items on the cards and especially the ones you place on their own backs. 10. 20 Questions (any level, group) One person thinks of an object (person, place, or thing). Everyone takes turns asking yes/no questions until someone can guess correctly (or until 20 questions are asked). The difficult part is that you cannot ask "WH" questions! Example: PINEAPPLE. Does it talk? No. Does it make life easier? No. Do you eat it? Yes. Is it something you would eat for dinner? No. If someone makes a mistake in forming the question, other club members can help turn it into a proper question. 11. Can't Say Yes or No (any level, group) In this game everyone is given a certain number of coins or squares of paper (about 10). Everyone moves around the room starting conversations and asking each other questions. The only rule is that you cannot say the words YES or NO. If you accidentally say one of these words, you have to give a coin or square to the person who you said it to. Try to trick each other by asking questions that you would almost always answer with a yes or no. Think of other ways to trick your friends. Sometimes asking two quick questions in a row works well. (Especially tag questions: Are you new here? This is your first time in America, isn't it?). This game is a great way to practice using small talk and to add variety to your vocabulary. It also makes everyone laugh. 28 | P a g e  12. Fact or Fiction (intermediate-advanced, group) In this game, one person tells a short story about themselves or someone they know or heard about. Usually it is something funny or crazy. It can be a true story, or something made up. Example: Josh tells a story about his Uncle Leo who sleeps in the nude. One day Uncle Leo was sleepwalking and he went outside and took his dog for a walk. The next-door neighbor was coming home late from work and saw him! She called the police and he got arrested for being naked in public. Everyone around the room has to say whether they think Josh's story is fact (true) or fiction (made up). Josh reveals the truth when everyone has guessed. Members can take turns telling a story. 13. Chain Fairytale (intermediate-advanced, group) This is a fun writing warm-up. Everyone has a piece of paper and writes the first sentence or two to start a fairytale (not one that already exists). Example: Once upon a time there was a frog that had no legs. He wanted to get married, but there were no female legless frogs in the land. After one minute the leader will say "SWITCH". At this time the writers have to put down their pens and pass the papers. They cannot finish their sentences. Then, the next writers will continue the story. After about ten minutes you will have as many silly stories to read as you have club members. The leader should warn the writers that they will soon have to wrap-up the story during the last two minutes so that each story has a conclusion. Read all of the stories out loud for a good laugh. You can extend this activity by trying to edit each other's writing and spelling errors. 14. Draw the Picture (beginner-intermediate, group) In this activity members split up into pairs or small groups. One person looks at a scene from a magazine or book (the leader should cut out enough pictures, or bring in enough magazines for the club). The other person has a pencil and a blank piece of paper. The person with the picture will try to describe everything he sees to the drawer. This is good practice for using prepositions of place. When the describer is finished, compare the drawings to the real thing! Whose is the closest to the original? 15. Categories (beginner-intermediate, group) For this game, one person thinks of a category, such as MOVIES. In a circle, everyone must take a turn thinking of a Movie title (in English of course). If someone takes too long to give an answer (the leader should count to five) then that person is out and a new category begins. If someone gives an answer that doesn't make sense or is incorrect, he is also out of the game. For example, if the category is VEGETABLES and someone says "banana" that person is out. The game continues until only one person is left! 16. Who am I? (beginner-intermediate, group) In this game, the leader prepares cards with famous people's names on them. The leader tapes one card on the back of each member. Then everyone pretends they are at a party and asks each other questions to find out their own identities. When someone guesses their own name correctly, the name-tag gets taped to their front and they continue to chat with the party guests until everyone is wearing the nametag on the front. 29 | P a g e  17. Hot Seat (intermediate-advanced, group) In this game, the club is split up into two teams. One member from each team sits facing the group. The leader holds up a word (or writes it on the board if you are in a classroom) for all of the team members to see except for the two players in the hot seats. The teams must try to get the person in the hot seat to guess the word or phrase. The first person to guess correctly gets to stand up and a new member from their team takes the hot seat. The person on the other team has to remain in the hot seat until she gets an answer first. You can keep score or just play for fun. This game can also be played in pairs. One pair member closes their eyes while the leader shows the word to the other pair members. The first pair to get the word right gets a point. Warning! This is a loud game because people tend to get excited and yell! 18. Broken Telephone (any level, group) This is a listening and pronunciation activity that always gets people laughing. The leader first must think of a sentence or phrase and whisper it to the person beside her. That person will then whisper what she heard to the next person. Each person can only say, "Can you please repeat that?" one time. When the message reaches the end of the chain that person must speak out loud. Oftentimes the message will be completely different when it reaches the end. Try to find out where the chain broke! In a big group you can send the message two ways and find out which team comes closest to the real message. (A famous example is the army message that started as "Send reinforcements, we're going to advance" and ended as "Send three and four pence, we're going to a dance.") 19. Tic-Tac-Toe (any level, group) The teacher draws a 3x3 table on the board and writes the numbers from 1 to 9 in each square. Each number corresponds to a question the students need to answer. Write the questions in advance according to the point being taught. The students are divided into two groups, one for noughts and the other for crosses. The groups take turns chosing a square and answering the corresponding question. If the group gets the answer right, they can draw their symbol in the square, or if they get it wrong, the other group gets the square. The group to sussessfully make a line of 3 wins. For longer games, the teacher can make a 4x4 table. 20. Board Race (any level, group) Divide the class into two teams and have each team line up in front of the board. Give a marker to the first student of each team. Write questions in advance according to a theme or a teaching point. The teacher asks the question and the first student to write the answer on the board wins. The two students run to the end of the line and the second question is asked to the second students of each team. The game goes on until all the questions are answered. Example: The teacher says the name of a city and the students need to write the country it belongs to. 21. Object Stories (intermediate-advanced, group) Collect a number of objects and put them all in a canvas bag. The objects can include everyday items like a pencil, key-chain, mobile phone, but also include some more unusual ones i.e. a fossil, holiday photograph, a wig, some pictures, etc. Pass the bag around the group and invite each 30 | P a g e student to dip their hand into the bag (without looking) and pull out one of the objects. The leader begins a story which includes his object. After 20 seconds, the next person takes up the story and adds another 20 seconds, incorporating the object they are holding. And so on, until everyone has made a contribution to your epic literary tale. 22. Word Association (any level, group) The first student says a word, going around the class, each student must give a different word associated with the last one. 23. Secret Sentence (intermediate-advanced, group) Write random sentences in pieces of paper and give each student one. They need to start a conversation with a partner and include their sentence without the other noticing. 24. Alphabet Conversation (intermediate-advanced, group) Ask a student to pick a random letter of the alphabet. That student then needs to start a story or a conversation with a word that begins with that letter. The next student continues, starting his/her sentence with a word that begins with the next letter of the alphabet and so on until all letters are used. Next is the presentation of the topic. You may want to present the topic with a dialogue, a reading, a dictation, a song or whatever activity suits your pupils well. A presentation is meant to just present the topic and not explain it. At this stage, it is supposed that students acquire the language in a natural way. It may last 15, 20 or 25 minutes. The grammar, grammar notes or explanations of the content are given in this section. Do not extend the explanation; just go straight to the point with the necessary information the students need to manage the topic well. This section may last between 15, 20, 25 or 30 minutes maximum. The practice starts here. Start with the controlled practice, continue with the semi-controlled and end with the free practice. The following information taken from table 9.1. Taxonomy of language- teaching techniques (adapted from Crookes & Chaudron1991:52-54) gives a clear example of what to include in each of the controlled, semi-controlled and free practice section. CONTROLLED TECHNIQUES 1. Warm-up Mimes, dance, songs, jokes, play. This activity gets the students stimulated, relaxed, motivated, attentive, or otherwise engaged and ready for the lesson. It does not necessarily involve use of the target language. 2. Setting Focusing in on lesson topic. Teacher directs attention to the topic by verbal or nonverbal 31 | P a g e  evocation of the context relevant to the lesson by questioning or miming or picture presentation, possibly by tape recording of situations and people. 3. Organizational Structuring of lesson or class activities includes disciplinary action, organization of class furniture and seating, general procedures for class interaction and performance, structure and purpose of lesson, etc. 4. Content explanation Grammatical, phonological, lexical (vocabulary), sociolinguistic, pragmatic, or any other aspects of language. 5. Role-play demonstration Selected students (or teacher) illustrate the procedure(s) to be applied in the lesson segment to follow. Includes brief illustration of language or other content to be incorporated. 6. Dialogue/ Narrative presentation Reading or listening passage presented for passive reception. No implication of student production or other identification of specific target forms or functions (students may be asked to "understand"). 7. Dialogue/ Narrative recitation Reciting a previously known or prepared text, either in unison or individually. 8. Reading aloud Reading directly from a given text. 9. Checking Teacher is either circulating or guiding the correction of students' work, providing feedback as an activity rather than within another activity. 10. Question-answer (display) Activity involving prompting of student responses by means of display questions (i.e., teacher or questioner already knows the response or has a very limited set of expectations for the appropriate response). Distinguished from referential questions by the likelihood of the questioner's knowing the response and the speaker's being aware of that fact. 11. Drill Typical language activity involving fixed patterns of teacher prompting and student responding, usually with repetition, substitution, and other mechanical alterations. Typically, with little meaning attached. 12. Translation Student or teacher provision of L1 or L2 translations of given text. 32 | P a g e 13. Dictation Students write down orally presented text. 14. Copying Students write down text presented visually. 15. Identification Students pick out and produce/label or otherwise identify a specific target form, function, definition, or other lesson-related item. 16. Recognition Students identify forms, as in identification (i.e., checking off items, drawing symbols, rearranging pictures), but without a verbal response. 17. Review Teacher-led review of previous week/month/or other period as a formal summary and type of test of student recall performance. 18. Testing Formal testing procedures to evaluate student progress. 19. Meaningful drill Drill activity involving responses with meaningful choices, as in reference to different information. Distinguished from information exchange by the regulated sequence and general form of responses. As Brown (2001) established, there is a range of classroom language teaching semi- controlled and free techniques: SEMI-CONTROLLED TECHNIQUES 1. Brainstorming A special form of preparation for the lesson, like Setting, which involves free, undirected contributions by the students and teacher on a given topic, to generate multiple associations without linking them; no explicit analysis or interpretation by the teacher. 2. Story telling (especially when student-generated) Not necessarily lesson-based, a lengthy presentation of story by teacher or student (may overlap with Warm-up or Narrative recitation). May be used to maintain attention, motivate, or as lengthy practice. 3. Question-answer (referential) Activity involving prompting of responses by means of referential questions (i.e., the questioner does not know beforehand the response information). Distinguished from Question-answer, display. 33 | P a g e 4. Cued narrative/ dialogue Student production of narrative or dialogue following cues from miming, cue cards, pictures, or other stimuli related to narrative/dialogue (e.g., metalanguage requesting functional acts). 5. Information transfer Application from one mode (e.g., visual) to another (e.g., writing), which involves some transformation of the information (e.g., student fills out diagram while listening to description). Distinguished from Identification in that the student is expected to transform and reinterpret the language or information. 6. Information exchange Task involving two-way communication as in information-gap exercises, when one or both parties (or a larger group) must share information to achieve some goal. Distinguished from Question- answer, referential in that sharing of information is critical for the task. 7. Wrap-up Brief teacher- or student-produced summary of point and/or items that have been practiced or learned. 8. Narration/ exposition Presentation of a story or explanation derived from prior stimuli. Distinguished from Cued narrative because of lack of immediate stimulus. 9. Preparation Students do study, silent read, pair, plan, rehearse, and prepare for later activity. Usually a student-directed or -oriented project. FREE TECHNIQUES 1. Role-play Relatively free acting out of specified roles and functions. Distinguished from Cued dialogues by the fact that cueing is provided only minimally at the beginning, and not during the activity. 2. Games Various kinds of language game activity not like other previously defined activities (e.g. board and dice games making words). 3. Report Report of student-prepared exposition on books, experiences, project work, without immediate stimulus, and elaborated on according to student interests. Akin to Composition in writing mode. 4. Problem-solving Activity involving specified problem and limitations of means to resolve it; requires 34 | P a g e  cooperation on part of participants in small or large group. 5. Drama Planned dramatic rendition of play, skit, story, etc. 6. Simulation Activity involving complex interaction between groups and individuals based on simulation of real-life actions and experiences. 7. Interview A student is directed to get information from another student or students. 8. Discussion Debate or other form of grouped discussion of specified topic, with or without specified sides/positions prearranged. 9. Composition As in Report (verbal), written development of ideas, story, or other exposition. 10. A propos Conversation or other socially oriented interaction/speech by teacher, students, or even visitors, on general real-life topics. Typically authentic and genuine (Brown, 2001). These are some pieces of advice you can take into account when assigning a homework assignment, however, keep in mind that homework goes along with students’ needs: 1. If you are using a course book let them develop some exercises assigned in the unit you are studying. 2. Students can also be assigned writing tasks like essays, dialogues, giving advice, voicing an opinion, or politely agreeing or disagreeing. 3. You may want to use worksheet from the text book or from internet to review the topic, too. 4. Students can also be asked to read a topic beforehand. Let them prepare themselves before you explain the lesson. 5. Research can also be done. You may ask students to look up a grammar point or any matter related with the topic. 6. Tell the students to explore other ways of learning the target structure, vocabulary or topic seen in class. Types of lesson plan: Detailed, Semi-Detailed, and Brief. 35 | P a g e  PARTS OF A LESSON PLAN Objectives Contents: -Topic -References -Materials Procedure: A. Learning Activities (Teacher’s Activity - Student’s Activity) -Motivation -Presentation -Discussion -Analysis -Generalization B. Application C. Evaluation D. Assignment Are you ready to write your own lesson plan? CLOSURE ACTIVITIES The nature of the macro skills, concepts and approaches in teaching and learning a language, and information about writing a lesson plan for macro skills are detailed in this chapter. Additional information and readings may also be accessed in the class’ official Dropbox folder should you be interested in extending your knowledge about the lesson. Based on the lesson presented, what are the key areas to highlight and remember? What are the features of the macro skills that make them significant to language learners? Explicate your thoughts by writing a reflection paper about the chapter. You may use a short bond paper or yellow paper for this activity. This is good for 1 hour. 36 | P a g e SYNTHESIS / GENERALIZATION  Traditionally, there are four macro skills but due to digital development, there are now six macro skills considered and accepted in language learning and acquisition.  Many approaches have been proposed in teaching language macro skills. Some of these approaches include communicative language teaching, task-based approach, integrated approach and sociocognitive- transformative approach.  Despite the effort of improving learners’ macro skills and the extensive literature available about these skills, many novice teachers and researchers remain to have limited or naive perspective of what these skills are. Moreover, many language teachers are still not aware that there are already six language macro skills as a result of the proliferation of information technology.  A lesson plan is defined as a source or tool that guides teachers through their working learning process.  It is imperative for a teacher to plan his/her lessons since this has the content, method, activity, practice and material that the teacher will use in the development of the class. Teachers that do not use a lesson plan usually mislead the learning pro